The new market bubble

Enthusiasm for the Dow’s record high looks dangerously frothy given the context of the move.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about how six years of 0% interest rates and five iterations of bond buying (taking the monetary base from $800 billion to more than $3 trillion) has been an abject failure in its effort to help working class Americans rebuild. Sure, initial efforts in 2008 and 2009 ended the last bear market and quelled panic.

But the Fed’s insistence to keep pushing whenever the stock market catches a cold has resulted in record gas prices, a widening of the inequality between rich and poor, and undercut the ability of seniors to find low-risk investments that will protect them from the ravages of inflation.

And it’s resulted in the weakest, most underwhelming economic recovery of the modern era.

I care, and I believe most Americans care, more about a near 8% unemployment rate, $4 a gallon gasoline, persistent inflation in housing rents and health care costs, higher taxes, stagnant wages, and the fact that six million fewer Americans are working full-time vs. the 2007 high — even as the population has swelled by 12.3 million over that time.

I'm the executive vice president for a steel casting trade association, the Steel Founders' Society of America.
I've got a crazy wife, five crazy children, three crazy people that married into the family, and two crazy fun little grandsons.